My XJ has a Safari Snorkel installed but one thing has annoyed me about the standard Safari installation, the airhose loops down significantly where it enters the engine bay. The problem with this is that the hose gets a major hit if the tire is stuffed into the fender at max articulation. Following Erics mini-project on
www.ericsxj.com I decided to reroute the air tube so that it entered the airbox from the side. This removes the loop issue and puts the hose way up under the fender where it can’t easily get damaged.
First job is to make a new hole in the inner fender to route the hose into into the engine bay. The only viable place is underneath the PCM and there is just enough room to drill a 3” hole.
Here’s the hole drilled out and coated with red oxide.
Next is to adapt the airbox. As my airbox had the original Safari supplied adapter already fitted, I thought best to go to the junk yard and pick up another one and start afresh. First I drilled a 3” hole in the airbox so that the hose can be fitted, and sealed off the factory air hole. I used one of the offcuts from installing my hood vents to seal up the factory hole. Cut to shape, riveted in and then sealed with sealant.
You will see in the above photo that the hose connector is already installed in the 3” hole. Getting the correct connecter was a PITA! It had to have a 3” outer diameter (to accept the hose) and minimum 2.5” inside diameter so that the air volume going through it would remain as standard. Could I find an appropriate piece of PVC? No way. Searched home improvement centres and the internet, but in the UK, 3” tubing is a non standard size. A friend of mine suggested a swimming pool builder might have the correct size to use as an adapter. Yes, they did have a 3” coupler but it only had an internal diameter of 1.75”.
Here’s the coupler as bought
Muddeprived of
www.xjchat.com came up with an excellent way of adapting the coupler:-
To end up with this:-
Next was to install the airbox and hose back into the XJ. As there is not a lot of room in that corner of the engine bay, I attached the hose first and then fed it through the hole from the engine bay to the outside world.
Here’s it all installed. I’ve removed the PCM in this pic so that the hose can been better seen:-
Next is to shorten the air hose. I lobbed a good 12” off the hose and reconnected it to the snorkel.
A shorter hose, less bends to restrict the airflow, and it's out of the way and won't get hit.
Job done!
